Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Eisenstadt and Shachar provide new insights into the development of urban civilization. They use a comparative and historical approach to analyse early forms of urban development within preindustrial societies. After reviewing the existing theories of urbanization, the authors present a new macrosocietal and comparative theoretical approach. They analyse nine civilizations in the context of their political regimes, social processes, and cultures.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Part 1 Theoretical Approaches
• Theories of Urbanization
• Cities and Urban Systems
• Toward A New Comparative Civilizational Approach
• Part 2 Case Studies
• Urbanization in Southeast Asia
• Urbanization in Colonial Latin America
• Urbanization in the Chinese Empire
• Urbanization in the Russian Empire
• Urbanization in the Byzantine Empire
• Urbanization in the Early Periods of Islam
• Urbanization in India
• Urbanization in Japan
• Urbanization in Medieval Europe
• Part 3 Analysis and Conclusions
• Major Dimensions of Distinctiveness of Cities and Urban Systems
• Patterns of Cities and Urban Systems and the Institutional Creativity of Cities

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

An important contribution to the literature on urban structure and living patterns. Using much of the world as their laboratory, Eisenstadt (a sociologist) and Shachar (a geographer) offer an insightful macrosocietal analysis of urbanization from both comparative and historical perspectives. Tying together political, cultural, and social processes, they advance a novel theoretic approach to the evolution of urban systems. They then apply these notions to case studies on the rise of cities in Southeast Asia, Colonial Latin America, the Chinese, Russian, and Byzantine Empires, the Early Islamic period, India, Japan, and medieval Europe. These overviews are then synthesized in the concluding section, which focuses on urban development within a unified explanatory framework. This book builds on a number of works in this broad interdisciplinary field, but breaks new ground and really stands by itself in successfully bridging the research of several heretofore disparate approaches to the study of urbanism. A sturdy volume, well printed and clearly organized. The bibliography and index are useful, but not so thorough as one might hope. Upper-division and graduate students.-P.O. Muller, University of Miami